Teaching old wells new tricks:

Reserves for the modern grid

Michael Campos, Ph.D.

ARPA-E Fellow

March 14, 2018

Several presentations cover challenges of adding wind and solar

Geologic storage,

other approaches

New approaches for

daily/weekly cycling

Fraction of annual energy from wind and solar in a large grid

Storage duration (hours at rated power)

1

2 3

4

New forms of resource

management, flexible

inverters, etc.

1

10

100

1000

1

Uncovering large, latent resources

2Recode, Fortune, Bloomberg.com, eMarketer, DOE, EIA, Drillinginfo

>$60B valuation

>7M drivers

$52B in ad revenue

“Audience of one”

725k new jobs

Defeated peak oil

3

Gas pipelines

Oil pipelines

Oil Natural gas

“The United States of oil and gas,” Washington Post, 2017

Fractracker.org; King and King, SPE Prod. & Ops., 2013; PwC; EIA; World Bank

Vast natural resources

• More oil than Saudi Arabia (15M bbl/day, #1)

• More natural gas than Russia (80B ft3/day, #1)

• Impact ~ GDP of S. Korea ($1.3T/year)

Vast manmade resources

• 700k – 3.5M inactive wells

• 1-10T m3

• 900-9000 TWh (and growing)

4

Gas pipelines

Oil pipelines

Oil Natural gas

“The United States of oil and gas,” Washington Post, 2017

Fractracker.org; King and King, SPE Prod. & Ops., 2013; PwC; EIA; World Bank

Wind

Solar

‣Oil & gas know-how

‣Storage concepts

‣Creative adaptations

5

Let’s unleash depleted wells as an energy storage resource

Second life as

“electron reserve”

Oil & gas wells are large, premade containers

6Images: World Information Transfer; W. Australia Dept. of Mines, Industrial Regulation, and Safety

Data: Overview on all Known Underground Storage Technologies for Hydrogen, Hyunder, 2013

Features:

‣ ~1M-10B m3

‣ 10-100+ bar

‣ 15-30% porous

‣ Surveyed and drilled

‣ Infrastructure built

Li-ion

Flow

batteries

Tank storage

Compressed air

~5 Wh/L

Geologic

H2

Pumped

hydro

Goal: shed cost, keep efficiency

* Marginal installed capital cost of delivered energy 7

Round-t

rip e

ffic

iency

Installed cost ($/kWh)*0.1 1 10 100

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

~140 Wh/L

~0.75 Wh/L

Geologic hydrogen: cheap and cheaper

8Lord et. al. Int. J. Hyd. En. 2014, 39, 15570

Sainz-Garcia et al. Int. J. Hyd. En. 2017, 42, 16657.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Salt cavern Depleted well

Tota

l capital costs

($M

)

Mining

Compressor

Cushion gas

Other

$1.61/kg

$1.23/kg

~25% to

work with

Features:

‣ Free mining and infrastructure

‣ 5-year head start

Challenges:

‣ Parasitic processes

‣ Slow mass withdrawal

‣ NG/H2 mixtures

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Cavern

Turbine

Compressor

Other

Compressed air (CAES) has similar trade-offs

9Electricity Storage and Renewables: Costs and Markets to 2030, IRENA, 2017

Challenges:

• Can residual NG be monitored and used for reheating?

• Is heat storage feasible long-term?

• How do you lower lower financial risk?

~40% to

work with

Underground pumped hydro: “down is up”

10US ACE; Gravity Power; Quidnet Energy

Traditional

Upper

reservoir

Lower

reservoir

Underground concepts

“Upper”

reservoir

“Upper”

reservoir

Innovations needed

11

Location optimization

Forgiving power

conversion

Storage simulation

‣ Resource availability

‣ Dimensions, state of repair

‣Messy input data

‣ NG/oil

‣Water

‣ Sulfur compounds

‣ Cost projection

‣ Loss minimization

‣ Safety

Interdisciplinary

teams!

Thank you!

michael.campos@hq.doe.gov